Iraq claims to UN that Islamic State extremist group has captured 2,500 chemical rockets

The Associated Press Tuesday night is reporting a claim by Iraq that “the Islamic State extremist group has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility northwest of Baghdad, where remnants of 2,500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with the deadly nerve agent sarin are stored.”

The U.S. government, for its part, has “played down the threat from the takeover, saying there are no intact chemical weapons and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to use the material for military purposes.”